Everything You Need to Know About FOX's Gotham

Your guide to Gotham.

Despite lacking Batman himself, the marquee superhero protector of the city it takes place in, FOX's Gotham is this fall's highest profile comic book TV show. With an impressive cast and an epic parade of cops and crooks to portray (basically everyone Gotham-related who isn't Batman), Gotham takes place long before billionaire Bruce Wayne decides to dress up like a bat and stalk criminals at night.

Acting under the unifying "What If?" premise of "What if Jim Gordon, as a rookie GCPD detective, was the one who investigated the Crime Alley murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne?" Gotham hopes to reinvent some of the characters and switch up some of the relationships in the Batman-verse.

Premiering Monday, September 22nd, FOX is betting that Jim Gordon battling police corruption while heavy-hitters like The Penguin, The Riddler, and other iconic DC villains make their mark out in the shadows is enough to bring in viewers. So here's what you need to know about the show.

What's It About?

As an origins piece, Jim Gordon - a combat vet cop who requests to be placed in the toughest precinct in Gotham - takes center stage. Paired with veteran "blind eye" Detective Harvey Bullock, the two catch a murder case in the Theater District. A rich couple gunned down in an alleyway.

Ben McKenzie and Donal Logue as Detectives Gordon and Bullock.

Once Bullock learns how famous the couple actually is, he wants no part of the case. But it's too late and from there the two get caught up in Gotham's intricate criminal underworld.Though Batman isn't part of the series, Bruce Wayne is. And here, as a twelve-year-old boy, he meets Jim Gordon during his darkest hour. All the while, Fish Mooney, one of crime boss Carmine Falcone's lieutenants, makes moves to put the squeeze on the investigation. From the outset, it seems at though the series will use Gordon's initial pledge to young Bruce, to bring those responsible for his parents' death to justice, as its backbone.

Who's It From?

Gotham comes to use from Rome's Bruno Heller, so you know interpreting epic history is a specialty of his (be it real history or, you know, comic book backstory). Danny Cannon (CSI, Nikita) directed the pilot for the series.

Heller ruffled a few feathers when he stated back in May that this show's design would visually surpass that of the films. And, discounting Joel Schumacher's hyper-neon cityscape, the look and appeal of both Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan's Gothams, as different as they might be, were exceptionally well-regarded. So Gotham, as a show, has been on the bit the defensive ever since.Heller's Gotham though, as described, is to be a vivid, crowded, blustering place that evokes New York City in the 70s. "Gritty and dirty and sexy and dangerous," Heller stated. And as far as the characters themselves go, Heller said that it was imperative to mix things up from what we all know and expect. "It’s really about being able to tell the secret histories of these stories," he told IGN in July. "If you just re-tell stories exactly as they’ve been told before, whilst you’re being true to the created mythology, you’re not really adding anything to it. So you have to find ways of finding more."

"Half the fun with all of these characters is who is going to turn into what and when?"